is a television subgenre in ''[[tokusatsu]]'' that involves Japanese superheroes or robots either with the ability to grow to immense heights to fight [[giant monsters|kaiju]] or who are originally giant as a part of their lives. The Kyodai Hero is the mainstream superhero genre that is widely popular in Japan. One of the earliest and most famous Kyodai heroes is Ultraman who made his debut in 1966.
1960s
The inception of the Kyodai Hero genre initially began with
Godzilla in the film
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Godzilla is portrayed as a personified natural disaster at first but over the course of the film franchise's many monster battles, he is gradually put into the position of protector of the human race, a key trope of the Kyodai Hero genre. Though Godzilla established the minor concept of the Kyodai Hero, the genre technically began with P-Productions' live action adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's
Ambassador Magma which predated the popular
Ultraman franchise, by six days.
Ultraman was created by the
Godzilla films' Special Effects Director and Supervisor
Eiji Tsuburaya.
Ultraman (a sequel series to the previous Tokusatsu
kaiju series
Ultra Q) quickly became very popular in its initial run, to the point that Tsuburaya Productions produced sequel show
Ultraseven, the second Kyodai Hero show ever produced – this series introduced another trope characteristic of the genre, in that the hero mainly fought aliens and their monster subordinates throughout the show.
Ultraseven was the final Tokusatsu Kyodai Hero show produced by Eiji Tsuburaya before his death in 1970. Since then, the increase in
Ultraman's popularity was so great that Tsuburaya Productions decided to revive the franchise in 1970 with
The Return of Ultraman, thus creating a series of Ultraman shows which continues to the present day, referred to as the
Ultra Series.
1970s
The 1970s saw the uprising of
Tokusatsu and Kyodai Hero shows, which coexisted with and helped shape kaiju films of the era. Tsuburaya Productions restarted the
Ultraman series with
The Return of Ultraman. This reignited high interest in studios to produce their own tokusatsu shows. Many of the tokusatsu shows from the 70s era mainly featured Kyodai heroes such as
Spectreman and
Super Robot Red Baron. By 1975, Tokusatsu shows were highly popular in Asia.
Toho even invented its own Kyodai hero to fight alongside Godzilla,
Jet Jaguar in the film Godzilla vs. Megalon, and introduced numerous other Tokusatsu heroes throughout the 1970s, including Godman,
Megaloman and Greenman. In Hong Kong, Shaw Brothers Studio produced its own Henshin/Kyodai Hero as well with The Super Inframan. Though stylistically more akin to
Kamen Rider, Inframan mixed Kyodai Hero elements into its formula, allowing the titular hero to grow to gigantic size.
Style and techniques
The Kyodai Hero genre usually involves a human (either a host to the hero, or simply a human form) who transforms into the eponymous hero, usually an organic cyborg, android, or robot, and changes to an enormous size to battle a giant monster or aliens. The special effect techniques usually use
suitmation and
scale models.
List of Kyodai Hero characters
